You Can’t Have Your Cupcake and Eat It

It’s my birthday today, so I was going to call this blog “its my party and I’ll LIE if I want to” telling you that I got up and knocked out a quick 10K before breakfast but thought better of it. I did get up and run, but a very short 1.7K to the post office, to pick up an exciting package that I will tell you about in tomorrows blog.

But today I want to talk to you about CAKE!!! Well it is my birthday after all so apologies if its a bit off topic and slightly unrelated to Junathon – but hey we all like Cake right??

Below is a guest post from a good friend of mine who runs Darling Cupcake in Manchester she is a fellow Fattie (or chubster as she likes to say), who I met on a booze fuelled trip to Malia before I took up running…in fact she was hanging upside down off a pole half the time or terrorising the streets on a quad bike, whilst I was….ahhhh no I’m not gonna tell you what I was up to.

Anyway, she has asked me for running and blogging advice a few times, and as someone who is surrounded by cake mixture, frosted icing and other edible treats all day everyday I figured who better to do a guest post on running and cake?

So when my good friend Julie asked me to write a few words on running and baking the first thing that came into my mind (other than I could murder a slice of carrot cake) was that my relationship with running basically consists of me grabbing all the cake I can hold and running for dear life before anybody tries to stop me shoving them in my face.

In all honesty my life as a ‘runner’ has most definitely taken aback seat recently. And not necessarily because I can’t be bothered or because I don’t want to but mainly because, although I am a woman and I’m supposed to have the amazing super-power of being able to multi-task I simply haven’t been able to fit it in with all of the other random hobbies I’ve picked up. And all excuses aside, I’m not as interested in running as I have become with baking.

I first began running maybe two years ago, well when I say running I actually mean panic-walking as I could not run to save my life. I tried many times before with friends who had participated in marathons and lost weight, they genuinely inspired me to want to run, but it never really stuck as much as it did in 2011. So I began with my panic-walks (at the gym on a treadmill). Panic-Walks are a combination of me panicking “I’m going to face-plant the floor” in my attempt to at least walk and burn off some fat. Needless to say I was a shambles. but little by little my gym buddy built up my confidence I got a little faster, I even stopped holding on to the rails of the machine and I began to go longer my speed picking up until I was actually running! I was doing so well I felt like I didn’t need to rely on the gym as much. I was running outside, on parks, on paths and it was hard, it was painful, it was tiring.

With old mans knee and watermelons for boobs I didn’t stand a chance, but I kept at it. The problem was I’d go for a jog and see someone with an amazing pair of trainers and I’d want them. Then I’d see another person with a crazy, pink beeping device also known as an interval timer, and surprise, surprise! I got one! This became a problem. Then I lost my job which became an even bigger problem. No more gym, no more fancy footwear, nothing. Although I will deny down to the ground that I didn’t make the choice to give up running, I did. It took a backseat to my baking.

I felt as though I was in a rut, running and exercise in general wasn’t showing me the love it had once shown me. Baking had come along with its pretty pink bows and its sugary kisses and I was hooked. I’d found a new love. A new love that was giving me what running had once given me. I was seeing results, I was becoming a cupcake queen, I had found something I had full control of.

During my transition from running and working out to baking I think that the loss of my job amongst other things had caused me a lot of stress. I can admit now that I had a huge bout of depression and at that time in my life I had no interest in running. I had no interest in engaging in an activity that I thought would make me feel like crap, I knew I’d look at the skinny minnies in their fancy footwear, with their even newer devices and their perfect running outfits and I’d hate myself. I did hate myself and I couldn’t see how running could make anything better for me when I had this new love in my life and I didn’t have to leave the house to do it. Baking made me happy. I tell everyone today that baking saved me and I believe it did. But what I didn’t realise that whilst baking was saving my mind it wasn’t saving my body. The two-stone I had lost came back with a vengeance, I was out of breath climbing my stairs at home and I was back on my inhaler. I hadn’t even realised! I had spent most of my time avoiding sweets and sugary snacks and I don’t particularly have a sweet tooth, but the truth was this was happening. I felt like Regina in Mean Girls when Cady had tricked her into eating these ‘Protein’ bars and slowly but surely she’d put on weight because really they were full of sugar. That’s exactly how I felt. I wanted to scream, I wanted to cry. I’m filling up writing this now because just remembering how I felt, how I still feel it’s sad.

What I do know is that I’m coping a lot better, I’ve made the decision to reintroduce running into my life and as sad as it is that I have had to start right from the start, these baby-steps are ‘necessary.’ Not only have I learnt to combine and enjoy the two together, when I find I’m having a mini meltdown a la Britney, before I take those clippers and reach for my luxurious head of extensions, I’d sooner put on my trainers and go for a stroll. And now I’m back running, because I feel so relaxed most of the time I’m less tempted to eat my weight in mixture and buttercream.

Seriously guys this crazy chick is one special lady in so many ways, and she has an amazing body and the most creative fashion sense of all my friends…its lucky she lives so far away though cos otherwise I would be her biggest customer, I’d also be raiding her wardrobe plus I’d drag her out of bed by her extensions on a sunday morning and make he run with me!! Check out her twitter feed @Darling_Cupcake and show her some love!!

Update – a sneaky nose on her Facebook page yesterday showed that she actually went for a run, whoop whoop!!

I really sympathise, my running gets kyboshed when I am depressed, even though if I kept at it, it would be the best thing to help me. I think it is so tied up with my self-esteem (weight, times, distances, races) that I just can’t handle measuring myself against me when I am down (nuts? oh yes). There is also an element of self-destructive behaviour about not running. I find walking, cycling and yoga help, for some reason I am not so bothered about them.
Have a lovely birthday, and keep going, you are doing really well.

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